It’s no secret that a gay man is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the most valuable company by market cap in the world. By any measure, Apple CEO Tim Cook has become “arguably the most effective corporate leader of all time.”

The headline in the August 2, 2018 Wall Street Journal  blared “Apple’s Market Cap Hits $1 Trillion. Technology giant hits new milestone that underscores the iPhone maker’s explosive growth.”

Tim Cook should be immensely proud of Apple’s stunning success, because the road to the one trillion dollar market cap hasn’t been easy.

Tim has personally endured the slings and arrows from certain segments of the media and a few  institutional investors for years. One critic claimed Tim was the wrong choice to sit on Apple’s board of directors, prior to his assuming his current role. Another claimed recently that Tim is Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, and destined to fail.

After troubles at the iPhone Foxconn manufacturing plant came to light in 2012, a Forbes opinion writer claimed that Tim Cook was to blame.

While those worker issues do not cost Apple shareholders money or seem to trouble its customers enough for them to stop buying its products, they are a further indictment of the problems with Tim Cook’s management approach.

He should solve them. If not, Apple’s board should find someone who will.

When he was anointed the new Apple Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and successor to Steve Jobs back in 2011, Wired  magazine’s Tim Carmody answered Tim’s critics with a piece that explained why Tim was the RIGHT choice to succeed Jobs.

IT’S NO REAL surprise that Tim Cook has been tapped to serve as Apple’s CEO following Steve Jobs’ resignation to become Chairman. Cook has spent 30 years distinguishing himself in the industry, spending the first half with IBM and Compaq and the second, more than 14 years, as Jobs’ right hand.

Tim Cook credits his success to hard work and his humble roots. When he publicly came out in a 2014 essay written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Tim declared “I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.” That’s a sentiment that many of us share with Tim.

Throughout my professional life, I’ve tried to maintain a basic level of privacy. I come from humble roots, and I don’t seek to draw attention to myself. Apple is already one of the most closely watched companies in the world, and I like keeping the focus on our products and the incredible things our customers achieve with them.

Tim Cook isn’t just Apple’s CEO, he’s a social justice advocate, an LGBT activist, and an environmentalist. His life and life experience influences the decisions he makes, and has an impact on the corporate social responsibility and values that Apple continues to embrace.


In April 2018, Apple announced its global facilities are powered with 100 percent clean energy. After the release of Apple’s diversity report in November 2017, TechCrunch reported that Apple has a larger percentage of black and Hispanic employees, than any other technology company.

From July 2016 to July 2017, Apple says half of its new hires in the U.S. were from historically underrepresented groups in tech (women, black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian & Other Pacific Islander). Apple’s new hires also reflect more diversity than its current employees. For example, 11 percent of Apple’s new hires were black compared to its current black employee population of nine percent.

We all travel different roads in our coming out process, and we learn that being gay bi or trans isn’t a ‘lifestyle choice’. We know It isn’t always easy to be out and self-identify as LGBT.
What makes Tim’s success special is that everyone in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBT) community can stand a little taller and celebrate in Tim’s success.

“As I look at the world, many of the problems of the world come down to the lack of equality,” Cook said. 

“It’s the fact that the kid that’s born in one zip code who doesn’t have a good education because they happen to be born in that zip code. It’s someone that is maybe in the LGBT community that is fired because of that. It’s someone that has a different religion than the majority and therefore they’re ostracized in some way.” 

“It became clear to me that there were lots of kids out there that were not being treated well, including in their own families, and that kids need someone to say, ‘Oh, they did okay in life, and they’re gay so it must not be a life sentence in some kind of way,’” Cook said. 

For Cook, surrendering his privacy was worth it, since it meant giving lots of people a role model to look up to.

Tim is a great  CEO, an effective social justice warrior, and a GREAT gay role model for LGBT kids and adults alike.

He’s arguably the best CEO of all time.

Straight talk indeed.


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